In today's blog we are going to tell you about the new vehicles, as well as changes in the ranking of the IL-2, which you'll see in the upcoming update.

1942 IL-2

This aircraft will replace the current IL-2 at the second rank. The armament consists of fixed wing panels, which have two 23-mm VYa cannons with ammunition of 150 rounds each, and two 7.62-mm ShKAS machine guns with ammunition of 750 rounds per barrel. On the inner pylons it is possible to attach four bombs from 50 to 100 kg, in the two outer holders it is possible to attach bombs of the FAB-100 or FAB-250 type. Under the wing panels there are rails installed - which could mount PO-82 (four on each side) rockets.

Kirill "Lassar" Vostretsov, game designer:

A logical continuation of the IL-2 of 1941 production. This model updates an existing single-seated version of IL-2 with 23 mm VYa-23 cannons and receives the correct payload with all its variety of bombs and rockets.

Yuri Titarev, artist:

The interesting feature of this aircraft are its fairings, which are positioned on the wings and cover the mechanical parts of the VYa-23 cannons and an anti dust filter, which is located on the right wing of the aircraft. Fairings with apparent simplicity have a rather complex form, which took quite a lot of time to work out and the dust filter itself has a rather complex conjugation with the wing, creation of smoothness in connection between these units was a challenge.

IL-2M AM-38 1943

Addition for the third rank. Offensive weapons similar to IL-2 1942 model, but in addition to that the aircraft had rear VUB-3 turret defense with a 12.7 mm UBT machine gun with ammunition for 150 shots. A bomb load of 400 kg is placed on the four DER-21 inner pylons, and a bomb bay along the centre line and two MDZ-40 outer pylons. Only RS-82 type rockets could be mounted.

Kirill "Lassar" Vostretsov, game designer:

IL-2M 1943 is the result of a hard work on the protection of IL-2s from the rear hemisphere and bringing opportunities of the attack aircraft to its single-seat counterpart. Starting with this model, the IL-2M had a boosted AM-38F engines installed, which allowed to mostly bring back the bomb load single-seated IL-2. Among other things, this aircraft has better angles of attack from gunners and fiber-sealing fuel tanks, which unlike metal ones were more resistant to hits.

Yuri Titarev, artist:

The main difference for this modification is the installation of the gunner’s cockpit. The turret located in the gunner’s cockpit has a complex structure and a lot of smaller parts. While modelling it we tried to deliver very accurately every small element of this complex system.

IL-2-37

The new version of IL-2, located on the third rank, which had no rocket load and with bomb load was reduced to 200 kg, due to changed armament. In fixed wing batteries there are two 7.62-mm ShKAS machine guns with ammunition of 750 rounds per barrel, and two 37-mm NS-37 cannons with ammunition of 50 rounds per barrel that are installed inside the pods.

Kirill "Lassar" Vostretsov, game designer:

This version of the IL-2, armed with two 37mm cannons, will be the most heavily armed in the IL-2 lineup. However, the heavier offensive weapons have substantially limited the payload by up to 200 kg of bombs without the option to mount rails for rockets.